R.I.P. Tom Snyder, Unlikely Punk Benefactor
Tom Snyder died yesterday in San Francisco at the age of 71, after battling leukemia for several years. Inevitably, most of the obituaries that will cross the newswires today will mention his heavy smoking on Tomorrow, which followed Tonight on NBC from 1973 to 1982, and Dan Aykroyd’s Snyder impression from the early years of Saturday Night Live. But Snyder deserves to be heralded by music-nerd circles, too.
From a Plasmatics performance ending with an exploded television to the the first American television appearances of U2 and “Weird Al” Yankovic, you could count on Snyder to have someone interesting on nearly every night. What other network television show before or since would feature a roundtable discussion on the state of music with guests Robert Hilburn, Kim Fowley, Paul Weller and Joan Jett? Thanks for the images, Tom, as they flew through the air.
Legendary Newsman Tom Snyder Dead [Fox 11 Los Angeles]
